


you dug me out of this shallow grave

by outruntheavalanche



Category: The Two Faces of January (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguity, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, Past Character Death, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-21 18:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17048120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: After Rydal returns stateside, he starts seeing Chester everywhere.





	you dug me out of this shallow grave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ConvenientAlias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/gifts).



> [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/profile)[**ConvenientAlias**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/), I meant to write you some kidnapping fic but ended up with this instead. I hope you enjoy it, and happy yuletide!
> 
> Much thanks to my friend [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/izzetboilerworks/profile)[**izzetboilerworks**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/izzetboilerworks/) for prodding me to finish and also betaing. 
> 
> Title from "[Lay Down in the Tall Grass](http://nullrefer.com/?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk7B-E4oIWA)," by Timber Timbre.

After Rydal returns stateside, he starts seeing Chester everywhere. If he were more inclined to be religious, if he believed in his mother’s saints and spirits, he might think he was seeing a ghost. But Rydal isn’t given to flights of fancy, not anymore, and so he realizes someone must be playing a cruel trick on him. Perhaps a friend of Chester’s has hired an actor to drive him mad. 

Maybe it’s his guilt. When he walks down the street and senses a presence at his back, it can’t be Chester. It’s only his lingering guilt chasing after him like a shadow. And when he feels eyes burning holes into the back of his neck and he turns to find an empty seat, it’s not Chester’s ghost. It’s the responsibility he bears. 

That’s the only logical explanation. 

Anyway, if he were going to be haunted Rydal thinks he’d rather be haunted by Colette. With Colette it had been uncomplicated. She’d confided in him and they’d gotten drunk together, drinking late into the night while Chester was off carousing about town. They hadn’t slept together, but in the end it hadn’t really mattered. 

Oh, Rydal had wanted to. How he’d wanted to. And Colette was more than willing too, smiling sweetly at him and touching his cheek tenderly, asking him to take her to bed. Cooing sweet nothings at him. Rydal hadn’t been able to go through with it because he’d felt some semblance of loyalty to Chester. 

A man Rydal knew would throw him over at the first sign of trouble. 

A man Rydal had only latched onto because he saw shades of his father in him. 

What did that say about Rydal? The less said about that, the better.

*** 

He gets himself an apartment in the city. 

There’s just something he finds reassuring about the city noise, the rumble of cars on the street, the yowling strays in the alleyway, the bickering neighbors on either side of him. It’s never quite quiet enough for Rydal to get lost in his thoughts. 

Tonight, his next-door neighbor is playing her—his?—jazz records. Rydal can hear the muffled music through the thick apartment walls. 

Billie Holiday, he thinks. 

_Death is no dream, for in death I'm caressing you  
With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you_

Rydal’s never been much of a fan. He rolls over in bed, pulls a set of earplugs out of his nightstand, and pops them in.

He can still hear the haunting strains of his neighbor’s music through the walls— _darling, I hope that my dream never haunted you_ —muffled like his head is being held under water and everything is coming to him through a haze. 

He’s out like a light before he knows what hit him. 

*** 

Colette comes to him in dreams sometimes, sprawled out in front of the gaping maw of the labyrinthine ruins like a broken doll, a bloom of slick red blood spreading out from underneath her crushed skull. He watches it soak into the golden-blond hair haloed around her head until the original color is indistinguishable.

Her blank blue eyes are turned up to him like glassy marbles. 

Try as he might, Rydal can’t make himself move down the stone steps to her. 

Sometimes the dream shifts, changes in barely perceptible ways—ways that would be noticeable only to Rydal. Sometimes Colette is dead, dead as a doornail. Other times she’s in her death throes, blood bubbling past her lips as she chokes out his name, why won’t help her, why is he just standing there, why won’t he save her. 

Sometimes it’s Chester lying at the foot of those steps, his eyes open but unseeing, sprawled out like a marionette that’s had all its strings snapped.

Officials in Turkey had told Rydal that Chester died, but he had never seen the body. 

*** 

After the whole nasty affair, Rydal had gone to the cemetery and buried Colette’s bracelet by Chester’s tombstone, but he hadn’t seen Chester after he was shot. 

They told Rydal he was dead and he took their word for it, but perhaps he’d survived. 

Maybe it wasn’t a ghost haunting Rydal. Maybe it was Chester himself. 

When the thought occurs to him, one particularly brandy-soaked, lonely night, he dismisses it outright. The thought that Chester could have survived and followed Rydal to the States like a spirit is simply ludicrous.

And _yet_ —

And yet.

*** 

Rydal’s new place has a balcony that overlooks a lonely stretch of park. At night, he leans over the railing, works on a glass of brandy, and watches shapes moving in the charcoal-dark of night. 

He likes to imagine their lives, and the reasons they’re out there in the cover of dark. Shady double-dealings, drugs, sex, perhaps worse. The things Rydal left behind when he came back home, along with his memories of Chester and Colette.

Before Rydal’s really thought about it, he finds himself pulling his coat off the hook by the door and slipping it over his shoulders. Then his feet march him out the door and down, down, down three flights of stairs.

The summer air is crisp and cool, the approach of autumn bleeding through like watercolors on paper. A stiff breeze caresses his cheek like the cool fingers of a dead lover. 

He traces the winding path that leads into the park, wandering by vaguely human-shaped shadows. As he passes, he catches a whiff of a lady’s expensive perfume and the thick musk of marijuana. 

As he walks, he grows more and more aware of the figure—the presence—at his back. Their footsteps don’t quite sync up with Rydal’s, their pace just slightly offbeat. When Rydal slows, the sound of footsteps stops. 

He can hear their breath coming in short little gasps and Rydal wants to turn—wants to face him—but he can’t bring himself to. 

Somehow, deep in his bones, he knows it’s Chester. 

His chest is tight with panic and his palms are somehow both cold and clammy. He wipes them on his jacket. 

Another stiff breeze rustles the leaves of the trees and rattles the branches. 

Rydal tips his head up to the sky. He can see the moon peeking through the clouds like a pearl in the mist.

“I thought I could escape you,” Rydal says, turning slowly.

Chester is leaning against a streetlamp, the glow on him like a spotlight. His clothes are second-hand, ill-fitting, hanging off him like rags and nothing he would have worn during his lifetime. His thinning hair clings to his skull, and his face is pale and drawn. He’s thin enough that he looks skeletal, not at all the man Rydal remembers from those whirlwind days in Greece and Turkey.

He pushes away from the lamp post and draws closer. Rydal stays planted in the middle of the sidewalk like a tree, unable to approach or flee.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Rydal asks him, choking on the words.

Chester just twists his thin lips in a queer Cheshire smile. 

Rydal flicks his eyes away, unable to keep gazing upon the grinning skull that had once been—

Had Chester ever been his friend? 

No, he’d been more. 

“I came all this way to see you and that’s all you have to say to me?” Chester asks, his tone incongruously bright. 

Chester takes one step closer, and another. Rydal doesn’t notice he’s backing away until one of his feet catches in a crack in the sidewalk and he stumbles. 

“Chester, I—”

Chester reaches out for him, a thin, bony hand closing around Rydal’s wrist. He almost feels alive, feels _solid_. Chester’s other hand slides into the pocket of his jacket and Rydal wonders if he has a gun, wonders if Chester has come for his revenge. 

Chester had given himself up for Rydal, confessing to everything, but maybe there was still some score to settle. 

Chester gazes up at the dark façade of the apartments that loom overhead. “Which one’s yours?”

*** 

Chester’s presence looms at Rydal’s back as he lets them into his apartment and pulls off his coat, which he hangs up on the hook by the door. Chester shuts the door quietly behind them. 

“Would you like a drink?” Rydal asks, with a laugh. 

It’s just so absurd. There’s a dead man in Rydal’s apartment, a dead man who’s quite possibly come for revenge, and he’s offering him a drink as if they’re old friends. 

“I’ll pass,” Chester says. He sinks down on Rydal’s couch, tips his head back, and closes his eyes. 

As Chester relaxes, Rydal goes to his liquor cabinet to sort through the offerings before he finds what he’s looking for. He pauses for a moment, glancing at Chester over his shoulder. In the dim light of his living room, he can finally see the toll the last couple years have taken on Chester. He almost looks as if he’s had to dig his way out of his own grave. Maybe he did. 

Rydal goes over to the couch and sits down next to Chester, balancing a glass of brandy on his knee. 

“So, why _are_ you here? How did you find me?” he asks. 

Chester pops an eye open and zeroes in on Rydal with a hawk’s focus. “I missed you, Rydal,” he says, his tone soft, almost crooning. 

Rydal feels his cheeks flush with warmth that isn’t coming from the brandy. “That’s not an answer,” he points out, sipping at his drink. “Did you fake your death?”

Chester makes a thoughtful humming sound before answering. “Yes. A friend helped me,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate and Rydal doesn’t press for more. 

Rydal puts the drink aside. “Are you here to kill me?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Chester scoffs, sounding almost offended by the question. “I’m your next-door neighbor, Rydal. I hope you’ve enjoyed my jazz selections.”

Rydal frowns. “And you’re only saying something now?” he asks, shaking his head in disbelief. “Why?”

“I wanted to have some fun with you,” Chester says. “I haven’t been able to have much fun these last few years, you know.” 

“I thought I was being haunted,” Rydal admits, feeling silly now.

Chester throws his head back and laughs. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Rydal.”

“I think I’d have to disagree.” Rydal reaches out with a tentative hand, pressing his fingers against Chester’s cheek as if to make sure he’s really there.

His skin is cool but firm under Rydal’s touch, and undeniably alive. 

Chester holds himself still as Rydal touches his cheek, his breath curling against Rydal’s palm. He reaches up and closes his hand loosely around Rydal’s wrist. 

“Are you satisfied that I’m alive?” Chester asks. 

“Yes, I think I am,” Rydal says.

“Good.” Chester leans in and in and in, until his cool lips brush the corner of Rydal’s mouth.

Rydal turns his head until he’s kissing Chester back. When he breathes in, it’s Chester’s breath he takes into his lungs.

Then Chester is pushing him back with a hand in the center of his chest, until he’s on top of Rydal, pressing down, holding him down.

Rydal stares up at Chester. All his dreams are finally coming true and he doesn’t even know if he wants them to anymore. 

Chester seems to sense his hesitation though, because he crooks the corner of his mouth up in a smile. 

“Isn’t this what you’ve wanted?” he teases.

Rydal nods, unable to speak.

Chester leans in and kisses him again, his teeth tearing open the split in Rydal’s lip. The copper tang of his blood trickles down his throat, a bitter reminder of everything he thought he’d left behind in the ruins of Greece. 

Rydal arches up and kisses Chester back, smearing his blood across Chester’s lips.

If he minds the taste of Rydal’s blood, he doesn’t say. 

*** 

At some point, they’d moved to Rydal’s bedroom. Rydal only knows this because when he wakes with a start in the middle of the night, Chester is sleeping next to him. Moonlight filters through Venetian blinds, slashing Chester’s countenance in alternating strips of light and dark. 

When Rydal looks closer, he can see the pale scar where the bullet entered Chester.

He reaches out and rubs his thumb over it. Chester stirs a little in his sleep but doesn’t wake.

*** 

When Rydal wakes the next morning, Chester’s side of the bed is empty, the rumpled sheets the only sign someone was ever there. 

Rydal touches them; they’re cold. 

If Rydal didn’t know any better—the cut on his lip still stings and tastes of copper, and there are fresh wounds on his body that he didn’t inflict himself—he might doubt Chester was ever there at all.


End file.
